I'm the president behind Adogy, a marketing agency helping startups based out of Palo Alto, CA. I have spoken at Pubcon, Affiliate Summit, SES, Adtech, BlogWorld, New Media Expo, Forumcon and dozens of other conferences. I'm currently recognized as one of the top 10 most influential pay per click experts on the planet. I help entrepreneurs make sense of Google and what's going on in the online marketing world.

I'm a connector. I love connecting with like-minded individuals for a greater good. I can be found online at Google+ or @johnrampton.

Domain Migration Checklist

Changing your domain has now become a bit more difficult and risky as more weight has been placed on social signals and brands in the search results. However, we still want to make sure to mitigate as much risk as we can and get the best results possible. I work with many different startups that start with a domain and later when they have a little more money want to switch to a more hip domain. My latest switch I made was with a company called Pillows.com, by following this list outlined below we were able to switch everything with them flawlessly. I’ve worked with so many that I have created a fool-proof checklist to migrate your site from one domain to another domain without losing traffic.

Note: I do recommend consulting with an expert before doing this. As well, most sites lose a bit of traffic for a time and then it returns. I’ve only worked with one client that didn’t have a drop for a 2-12 week time period. Make sure once you launch the site to publish a lot of amazing content.

Here’s a simple guide and checklist to help you switch your domain and mitigate as much risk as you can in the process.

Pre-Migration or Domain Switch

This checklist is to be completed before you implement your migration or domain switch. Be sure to gather as much data as you can of the current state of your domain and how it is being indexed.

DO NOT plan to change anything else. More change = More confusion. If you have any design or site architecture changes, wait to implement these after the migration occurs and a few months have passed.

Check the new domain’s backlink profile, domain age, authority, whois and ip changes. Make sure that everything is in check and there aren’t any red flags like spammy backlinks or low authority.

Update WHOIS information on the new domain to be exactly the same as the information found on the current domain.

Register both domains with GoogleGoogle Webmaster Tools. Depending on your setup, you may not be able to register the new domain, you can do this later.

Crawl your site. I prefer to use Screaming Frog. You want to download a list of all internal pages and redirects on your current domain. This will help you to check URLs later as well as correct any redirect chains. Meaning, if you have a redirect on your current domain from currentdomain.com/redirect/ to currentdomain.com/page/, then the new redirect will be from currentdomain.com/redirect/ to newdomain.com/page/.

Download a list of “Your most linked content” in Google Webmaster Tools. This can be found in Search Traffic > Links to Your Site. Then click the “More »” link.

Download your error reports in Google Webmaster Tools. This can be found under Crawl > Crawl Errors.

Create a list of redirects for the URLs in your error report.

Note the number of indexed pages. There’s two places to note here, one is from your sitemap file and the other is in Google Index. The sitemap number of pages indexed is found under Crawl > Sitemaps. The other is found under Google Index > Index Status. Take note of both of these numbers to reference later and use as a benchmark.

Download a list of external links to your site. You can use several tools out there, or you can just use Google Webmaster Tools. This report can be found under Search Traffic > Links to Your Site and the clicking the “More »” link.

During Migration or Domain Switch

Once you have the above completed, move on to the actual migration. Switching your domain can take time to complete and propagate. You should have everything working before the actual launch of the new domain, but just in case I’d recommend doing this at the slowest time of your site.

Configure the new domain with the existing content and push it live to the web. Be sure to block this site from crawlers using robots.txt and password protecting it. Sometimes search engines don’t follow the guidelines in your robots.txt file so take the extra precaution with password protection.

Program and test the 301 redirects from the old domain to the new domain and from the error report. These redirects should be on a 1:1, or page level, basis. For example, currentdomain.com/page1/ should redirect to newdomain.com/page1/. This can be handled by rules in the .htaccess file so you don’t have to list out all the URLs one by one.

Update internal links with the new domain URL. You want to be sure that all internal links in the navigation and within content are using the new URL vs the current URL

Use the list of “Your most linked content” from Google webmaster tools and check some of the pages. The more the better, but it’s up to you how many you check. You just want to verify that all is setup correctly, the pages are loading without errors and everything functions perfectly.

Remove the password protection layer on your new domain.

Implement and test the 301 redirects from the current domain to the new domain and from your error report. Once again, this should be on a page by page basis.

Test the pages in from the “Your most linked content” report and be sure they are working.

Update the robots.txt file to allow crawlers.

Use a crawling tool to crawl all the pages of your new domain to check for errors and make sure all is functioning properly. You can spot check this if you don’t want to take the time, but I’d highly recommend doing this.

If you weren’t able to register your new domain with Google Webmaster Tools as the site wasn’t live, be sure to do it now.

Submit a “Change of Address” in Google Webmaster Tools. Click the gear box in the upper right-hand corner of your account and select the “Change of Address” link. You must be the original owner of both domains to be able to do this. Submit your change from your old domain to your new domain.

Request that Google crawls your site. In Google Webmaster Tools and under your new domain account, go to Crawl > Fetch as Google. Do not enter anything into the box as you should be starting with your root domain. Then click the “Fetch” button. This will process and upon success, you will see another button appear next to the submission “Fetch Status”. This new box will say “Submit to Index”. Click that button and select “Crawl only this URL”.

Create a new XML sitemap for your new domain. Submit this sitemap to Google in Webmaster Tools and to Bing, in Bing Webmaster Tools

Update external links from the “Links to Your Site” report in Google Webmaster Tools. Reach out to all webmasters and request they update the link from your old domain to your new domain.

Post Migration or Domain Switch

These steps should be taken immediately after migration.

Create content and new linkable assets to generate new links and traffic to your new domain. This should be ongoing and is vital to your success.

Check Google and Bing Webmaster Tools for crawl errors and correct them with redirects or updating settings on the new domain.

Compare the number of pages indexed from your sitemap and what Google has indexed that you noted earlier to your current numbers. Be sure these are aligning and there aren’t any major discrepancies.

Monitor organic traffic to your new domain and compare it to the organic traffic on your old domain. Make sure these closely align as well.

Each site may vary in how to go about these steps depending on the setup. I’ve created this list as a generic and simple outline of what to do when changing domains.

Migrated a site before and notice that I missed something on the list? Always looking to improve this list so if you have something else that you would add to this outline please let me know in the comments below!

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